Like Father-King, Like Wannabe-Dictator-Son
by Omnicat
Summary: AU in which Loki and Odin totally agree about this whole invasion thing and Thor is the poor bewildered straight man. (Let's be clear: this is crack. It's just that nobody informed poor Thor.)


In which Loki and Odin totally agree about this whole invasion thing and Thor is the poor bewildered straight man. (Let's be clear: this is crack. It's just that nobody informed poor Thor.)

**Like Father-King, Like Wannabe-Dictator-Son**

"YOU BEG ME TO LET YOU GO GET HIM, AND _THIS_ IS HOW YOU BRING YOUR BROTHER HOME?!"

Thor fought down the instinct to turn on his own war cry in answer to the sudden assault. "Father, I know you hesitated to let me be the one to undertake the task, but surely you do not think I would have done this unless it was for his own g –"

"SILENCE!"

Odin tugged the metal gag from Loki's head, inspected it, and balled it up like a wad of paper. The cuffs followed suit. With wariness and confusion warring in his eyes, Loki flexed his jaw and rubbed the spot where it connected to his ear. Thor opened his mouth to speak again – when Odin tossed the crumpled bindings aside and swept Loki up in a rib-cracking hug.

Thor could _hear_ the ribs cracking.

He and Loki shared a stunned look over their father's shoulder.

"My boy," Odin choked. "My son. I thought we'd lost you."

Thor stared for several long moments, mouth working ineffectively, as Odin continued murmuring expressions of endearment and relief in a bug-eyed Loki's ear. Then he regained himself, and reluctantly said, "Father, is this really the time for emotional reunions?"

"This is our reunion, is it not? Then yes, it is the time for it," Odin snapped, whipping around to look at Thor with Loki still clasped to him.

Thor's cheeks heated. Perhaps it _was_, despite everything. They had thought Loki dead for so long...

"F – Father?" Loki spluttered from the approximate region of Odin's armpit.

Odin finally let him stand up straight again. "What is it, my son?"

"I... don't understand," Loki admitted slowly, his eyes shooting from Thor to Odin and back.

"My joy at seeing you returned to us, alive and –" Odin glared pointedly at Thor. "– _mostly_ unscathed, cannot be expressed in words. What else is there to understand?"

"Perhaps the fact that he has committed unspeakable crimes in his quest to conquer Midgard?" Thor interjected, not quite able to keep the incredulity from his voice. "And tried to kill me? _Again?_"

"Oh. Yes." Odin gave Thor an impatient look. "Well, let's freshen up and get comfortable then, so we can handle that little _detail_, shall we?"

Thor's mouth fell open.

Odin headed out of the courtyard to which the Tesseract-powered transportation device had brought them, and into the palace. Loki followed after and shot Thor an annoyed look in passing.

"I am happy you're not dead too!" Thor protested. "But I would've been happier if you hadn't turned up alive at the head of an invading army."

It was the stuff of hopeless daydreams – month upon endless month of them – to watch Odin tut and cluck and fret over his brother like the disasters that had taken Loki from them had befallen Loki and Loki alone. But with every time Odin dismissed Thor's attempts to broach the problem at hand in favour of making sure even Loki's smallest scrape had been tended to, and there was enough bread and meat and drink on the table (Loki ate like he hadn't had a decent meal in years), and here, have _another_ golden apple, that smarmy wine server can go without this year, and are you sure you don't want me to drag your mother from her Friggasleep so she can cut your hair? – with every ounce of tension that left Loki's frame, every boxed cat that escaped his brain and sauntered off toward the proverbial horizon – Thor grew more conflicted.

His daydreams had been brutally shattered the moment Heimdall brought them the news of his brother's resurfacing – and the dozens of innocents he had instantly slaughtered.

And as if that hadn't been enough already, he hadn't even been able to see Jane again while he was on Earth. All in all, not a good week.

Eventually he snapped to his father, "Can we get to the point now, or does he need a massage and a manicure as well?"

Odin sighed and leaned back in his chair on the other side of the dining table. "Very well. Heimdall, Huginn and Muninn have kept me informed about what transpired between the two of you, but I suppose this episode does require some final words. Say your piece."

Despite everything, Thor hesitated – _he's your little brother! you're supposed to protect him, not condemn him!_ – until he looked at Loki, who was still stuffing his face, absurdly relaxed given the circumstances. A welcome sight in a way, yes, but after everything that had happened, a handfull of glass in his porridge would have been less jarring. Loki looked like he hadn't been beaten at his destructive game at all, and wasn't expecting there to be consequences.

Then again, that _was_ what Odin seemed to have in mind. Which was so ridiculous Thor was surprised he couldn't smell poetry mead on his father's breath.

"Loki had killed eighty people before I so much as set foot on Earth," Thor put bluntly. It was hardly a new insight, but surely Odin only needed to be reminded of the facts to return to reason? "His unprovoked killing spree was why I was so adamant to retrieve him, remember?"

"Opening with a piece of misinformation, great start," Loki said around a mouthful of cheese.

Thor sputtered.

Loki motioned with his knife – why was he allowed a knife, again? "I gauged out _one_ eye and fought down _maybe_ a dozen of their warriors, but the other sixty-seven were killed by my thralls, who had free reign to do whatever _they_ felt was necessary to complete their tasks, or were buried because the Tesseract's leftover energy became unstable." He turned to their father. "That is a major design flaw. I had honestly expected better from an artifact of such power."

"Indeed. Which is why I never made a priority of retrieving it," Odin said placidly.

"Where did you get it, anyway?"

"Your late namesake and I stole it from a race three world trees over," Odin said, a fond and wistful smile coming over his face. "Those were the days. I should regale you of the lay of that adventure some time. That millennium, feathered cloaks were all the rage for interdimensional travel."

Thor slammed his fist down on the table, because if he allowed Loki to ask for details and Odin to gather steam and go off on a tangent about the Good Old Days, _he would never shut up_. And more importantly (though perhaps only slightly), this farce would never end.

"Flawed design or not, the Tesseract is still immensely powerful and immensely dangerous, and had Loki succeeded, he would have given it away to the leader of these Chitauri and left us all at their mercy."

"That would have been very foolish –" Odin began to agree.

"And all because of his poisonous thirst for power!"

"– if there had been any truth to it at all," Loki finished. He looked offended. "Surely you know me better than _that_. Do his dirty work for him, only to then hand over enough power to wipe me from the memory of the universe before I could so much as think, 'hmm, I think I might like a bigger reward for my efforts than we had previously agreed upon'? _Please._ Didn't Selvig tell you? Once the machine that allowed the Chitauri passage to Earth had been activated, only my staff could breech the forcefield around it. Meaning, only _I_ would be able to reclaim it, and once I had, there would have been nothing left for me to fear from my mercenary army."

"Selvig said that... that he said he must have found a way to subvert your control of his mind," Thor said slowly.

Loki laughed heartily. "If there hadn't been a way to penetrate the forcefield, the Tesseract would have been stuck in that machine, powering the portal. Come now, Thor, think! All that power, wasted on _stopping a door_ for all of eternity?"

"A truly ingenious plan, my boy," Odin said, positively _beaming_. "Snatching your enemy's prize from right under their noses by using its own power against them. How masterful a play that could have been."

"_Father!_" Thor exclaimed, aghast.

"_What_, Thor?" Odin snapped. "If you will not air your grievances, allow your brother his successes. There is no honour to be had in haggling over points when you've already won the bout."

_Haggling over...?_

"What?" Thor blurted out.

Loki explained, testily, as if to a small, impudent child: "Yes, I lost. You destroyed my army and kept me from conquering a principality you wanted to keep as your own. I have already admitted defeat and withdrawn my claim – in front of witnesses, as far as your mortals were suitable for such a purpose. And I acknowledge the mistakes I made. You can stop rubbing them in. Not _everything_ I did while I was away was a complete failure."

Thor stared at Loki. Then at Odin. Then Loki again. Then Odin once more.

Not a shred of sense was to be found there.

"Have you both gone mad?" he exclaimed. "This is not about who gets which cut of the boar. Countless innocent lives have been lost because of Loki's actions!"

"Hardly countless," Loki scoffed. "If the point was to decimate the populace, I know much more effective ways, as you might remember."

"Literally hundreds of thousands of mortals die each and every day, Thor," Odin said. "Most of them of natural causes. That is why we call them _mortals_."

"That does not make them any less worthy of life!"

"And no-one claims otherwise," Odin said, giving him a look as if _Thor_ was the one spouting incomprehensible nonsense. "Or we would not include their realm among those under Asgard's protection. But it does mean it's pointless to get worked up when a handful of them kicks the proverbial bucket. For _whatever_ reason."

Thor had the uncomfortable impression of reality turning into a bucking horse that he was riding without a bit or saddle. "We are Asgardians. It is our duty to _protect_ the realms of Yggdrasil."

Odin nodded. "Exactly. Do you remember what I would often tell you when you were boys? That you were both born to be kings?"

"Yes?"

"So what better way for your brother to perform his duty of protecting the Nine Realms than by ruling a realm of his own?"

Thor threw his hands up in the air. "Oh, I don't know. By not trying to take them by force?!"

"Sarcasm doesn't suit you, brother mine," Loki said with a smirk. "There's a trick to it. It's called being right."

"_How_ am I wrong about this?" Thor demanded.

"We had to invade the Vanir too, at first, but look how happy they are now, under the guidance of your cousins," Odin said, shrugging, and with an expression as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Thor's thoughts stalled. Vanaheim was a thriving, prosperous realm, its wealth unparallelled and its political might second only to Asgard, despite their overwhelmingly peaceful society versus Asgard's warrior culture. And there was... if one wished to think of it that way... the little detail that, since Njord had spent the bulk of his youth in Asgard as a political hostage, and his Asgardian wife Nerthus was Frigga's sister, and their children Frey and Freya, now rulers of one of Vanaheim's two continents each, had spent almost as many years in Asgard as their father... one could, if one wanted to think of it that way... make a case for Vanaheim being ruled by the Asgardian royal family almost as surely as Asgard itself was...

But they made a habit of not thinking about it that way, and very emphatically _never said it out loud_. Because the Asgardians were guardians, protectors, peacekeepers – not invading dictators.

Except that Thor suddenly realised that, honestly, they kind of _were_ dictators. And the head dictator was sitting right in front of him, patting his wannabe-dictator son on the arm and smiling at him in encouragement.

"I always knew you had it in you," he even said. "I only wish we could have done it together!"

"Perhaps next time, offer me some place other than Jotunheim?" Loki said, looking torn between caution and hopefulness.

But Odin only smiled softly. "As long as you don't try to reduce our territories again."

For a long moment, Thor could think of nothing to say. "But..." was the only thing he could eventually manage.

"But what?" Odin snapped, evidently not pleased to have his heart-to-heart with his youngest interrupted.

Yes, but _what?_ It was painfully obvious they were talking at cross purposes. He could continue trying to get through to his father, perhaps _should_, but... whenever he had wanted something from or disagreed with Odin in the past, he had always had Loki by his side to do the heavy verbal lifting and keep the conversation following the track he – _they_ – wanted.

Now Thor was the one being ganged up upon. And to borrow Fury's words, he was hopelessly, _hilariously_ outgunned.

"So you..." He hesitated for a moment, resistant to the thought of intentionally making a fool of himself. But this situation would not get any better if he tried to manouvre it by guesses and assumptions. "So Loki is not to be punished for his actions."

"I do not intend to, no. It is your right, as the elder son and heir, to deny your brother's request for a principality of his own. And yes, Loki should have asked permission before he took action." Odin gave both his sons a stern look in turn, then fixed his eye on Thor and turned up the stern another few notches. "But _you_, Thor, should have made a formal claim if you were _that_ attached to the place and the people."

_How is this suddenly my fault?_ Thor wondered. But he didn't say it aloud, because he had a sinking suspicion the answer to that would only result in more nonsense and absurdity.

"This is it, then? It was okay for him to invade Midgard, so he's not going to be held accountable for anything he did?"

"What else was there to be held accountable for?" Odin asked, frowning.

"He tried to kill me."

"Oh, I did not," Loki sighed.

Thor clenched his fists. "That's not what you said when you dropped me from the airship."

"That wouldn't have killed you," Loki said. "Come on. I fell out of the _world tree_ and crash-landed into the atmosphere of a realm on the other side of the cosmos. Falling from the airship wouldn't have hurt you that much. I just wanted to see the look on your face. It looked very much like the one you've been wearing for the better part of this conversation."

Odin levelled another dose of Stern at Loki.

"I apologize," Loki told Thor instantly, not doing a very good job of hiding his good cheer. "It was an awful thing of me to do and I promise never to do it again. Please forgive me."

Thor glared at him mulishly.

"Brotheeeer, stop being mad at me," Loki whined. "I'm really sorry."

"I thought _you_ were mad at _me_."

"Which is why I dropped you from the sky. But I got it out of my system, and now we're even. Right?" Loki said, raising his eyebrows and smiling encouragingly.

_Even for wha...? No. You know what, never mind._ "Alright," Thor sighed.

Smiling brightly, Loki held out his hand. After a moment, Thor gave in to that nagging desire and reached out as well, and they clasped forearms. Just for a moment, he indulged in the feeling that all was finally right in the world.

Then he turned to their father. "I'm still the heir to the throne, am I not?"

Loki's face fell.

"Yes," Odin said.

"And I will stay your heir no matter what?"

"Yes. You're the eldest, that's how it works. Oh, don't look at me like that, Loki. Just wait, we'll find you a nice principality soon enough. And you won't have to do all that tedious conquering all by yourself next time."

"Good," Thor said, standing up. "Then I'm going back to Midgard now for an extended vacation."

"What, right now?" Loki asked, wide-eyed. "We only just got back. Can't you at least wait until mother wakes up?"

_I'd rather not,_ Thor thought. _At least this way I can pretend at least one member of this family besides me is still sane._

Odin raised a shrewd eyebrow. "How extended?"

_Right up until my next coronation._ "We'll see."

"Can I come visit?" Loki asked.

"That depends," Thor said, giving him a sharp look. "on whether you are willing to make amends to the people you've wronged and better your ways."

Loki looked doubtful.

Thor sighed. "Would you be willing to _pretend?_"

"Always," Loki said with a winning smile.

"Then you can come."

He would work on not giving in to Loki every single time _next time_. And hey, perhaps even Loki could benefit from the lessons in Midgardian-styled 'political science' Thor planned on taking alongside the lady Darcy.

He would _definitely_ benefit from a few whacks with fair Jane's metal chariot.

In the end, though, it mattered little whether or not he let Odin and Loki indulge themselves for now. One day Thor would be king, and that would be the end of that. What harm could they get up to in the meantime, anyway?

Until then, Thor would be basking in the comforting sanity of his potential future queen and his newfound human comrades. Stark had promised him unlimited access to his liquor.


End file.
